Cambodia: Developing Guideline for Gender Mainstreaming into Climate Change/DRR

Feb 13, 2021 | UN Women
View Original

The UN Women Cambodia Country Office (CCO) Strategic Note (SN) 2019-2023 focuses on three key priorities to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment (GEWE). The first priority is to strengthen government capacity and accountability to integrate international norms and commitments (CEDAW, SDGs, Beijing PfA, Sendai) into national legislative and regulatory frameworks, including supporting dialogue and CSO engagement in accountability for GEWE commitments.  The second area of focus is Ending Violence Against Women where CCO’s focus includes creating an enabling environment to prevent, respond to and prosecute all forms of GBV as well as ensuring that marginalized women who experience violence, including women migrant workers, access services and protections.  Thirdly, CCO works to enhance gender responsiveness in climate change action and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).  A focus on empowerment, women’s leadership, challenging negative gender norms and leaving no one behind runs through the programme.

In support of gender responsive climate change actions and DRR, UN Women Cambodia Country Office (CCO) is currently implementing a joint five-year regional project titled ‘EmPower – Women for Climate Resilient Societies’, with UN Environment that is supported by the Swedish International Development Agency. The EmPower’s work targets climate decisions and investments in the Asia-Pacific region to be more gender-responsive and human-rights inclusive.

Cambodia is one of the most vulnerable countries in South-East countries to disasters. Flood and drought are the major disaster risk in Cambodia. Cambodia has undergone loss of over USD 1 billion due to a series of disaster mostly flood like Ketsana flood in 2009, and flood in 2011 and 2013. Disaster management (DM) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) are long term tasks which the end cannot be defined as the natural and human-induced hazards as well as the environmental, technological and biological risks and hazards keep increasing.

Women, children, elderly and people with disabilities are considered as the most vulnerable group worst affected by natural disasters. They are affected differently by the disasters due to their knowledge, capacity and skill. However, women are more vulnerable than men to the disaster in particular flood, so it is important to engage women and men in the planning, decision, capacity building and son on. As a cross-cutting issue, gender is mainstreamed in different sectors. Gender is highlighted in DRR and DM related policies, law and strategies such as Law on Disaster Management and National Action Plan for DRR 2019-23.

Taking this into consideration, the National Committee for Disaster Management (NCDM) that was established as the headquarters of the Royal Government to lead, administer and coordinate all disaster management activities in Cambodia. Its mission has also made notable commitments to addressing gender inequality in DM/DRR through mainstreaming gender into the planning at all levels.

In this regard, the EmPower Programme of UNWOMEN Cambodia seeks for services of a consultant to develop a Guideline for Mainstreaming Gender into its Annual Plan and provide capacity building for the officials from the six Departments of NCDM’s General Secretariat.

Duties and Responsibilities

OBJECTIVES OF THE CONSULTANCY

  1. To develop a guideline for mainstreaming gender into annual workplan of NCDM’s General Secretariat that enable technical departments to address different gender needs at national and sub-national levels;
  2. To engage the technical Departments and Gender TWG within NCDM’s General Secretariat to provide inputs into the guideline; and
  3. To increase understanding in gender mainstreaming for the technical Departments and Gender TWG.

SCOPE OF WORK

The consultancy covers two main aspects:

A. Provide technical advice strengthening the programme in the area of Climate Change/DRR and Gender;

  • Provide technical inputs, mentoring and capacity transfer to the newly recruited Programme Coordinator for the Gender and CC/DRR Programme; 
  • Support reviewing on State of Gender Equality report in context CC/DRR including providing feedbacks and recommendations by working with the Empower team.
  • Support the development of the Empower’s donor report.
  • Developing most significant story indicating the result of the EmPower programme implementation in Cambodia.
  • Provide technical support on women’s leadership initiative of the Empower Project including provide technical trainings and reporting and analyzing on the training report.

B. Develop general mainstreaming guideline;

  • Conduct desk review focusing reviewing documents related to DRR, DM and Gender such as Law on Disaster Management, National Action Plan for DRR (NAP-DRR) 2019-23, Mid-term review report of the NAP-DRR 2014-18.
  • Identify areas of focus and main substances in line with the capacity of the NDCM secretariat and priorities including tools and methodologies for the consultation.
  • Provide capacity building on gender for the technical Department and Gender TWG within the NCDM’s General Secretariate
  • Produce the final guideline through the consultation with key stakeholders